“Letters to Anna” depicts the life and work of Anna Politkovskaya through interviews with people who knew her well, including family, friends and fellow journalists.

In October 2006, Politkovskaya was found dead in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow. She had been shot in the head.

Politkovskaya had been a fierce critic of the Putin administration and one of the few journalists to report from the front lines of the Chechen wars. Two days before her death, she published information about Russian forces working with Chechen criminal gangs.

Eric Bergkraut directed the documentary and explained, "Anna had a lot of courage ... maybe to see a woman who is very courageous looking for the truth may help us all be more courageous.”

Anna’s son, Ilya Politkovsky, told the BBC, "I am sure there will be an outcome of this investigation. I am hoping that the whole story will come out, from the people or person who ordered the killing, to the killer."

Journalist and novelist Yulia Latynina wrote last September a skeptical account of developments in the Russian police investigation, which appeared in both The Moscow Times and The St. Petersburg Times. Latynina detects a number of weaknesses in the police reports. Latynina’s conclusion is that while “Putin is in office we will never find out who ordered Politkovskaya’s murder.”

On Sept. 3, The New York Times responded to news that Russian authorities had arrested 10 suspects in connection with Politkovskaya’s murder. The Times judged it suspicious that the plot being uncovered “happens to confirm what Mr. Putin himself suggested only three days after Ms. Politkovskaya’s murder … that there were fugitives from Russian justice bent on sacrificing somebody ‘in order to create a wave of anti-Russian feeling in the world.’” The Times continues, “Forgive us if we remain skeptical. There’s just too much of the ‘usual suspects’ here.”

Raised in America and Russia, and the mother of two children, Politkovskaya was best known for her coverage of the conflicts in Chechnya. Chechen separatists have fought Russia for independence since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Politkovskaya visited Chechnya more than 40 times and, according to Reporters Without Borders, "was the only Russian journalist who reported on the second Chechnya war," which dates from 1999 and continues to this day.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in 1952 in Leningrad. For almost two decades, he worked in the KGB, the Russian secret service. He was elected president of the Russian Federation in 1999. He is now serving his second term as president. The Russian constitution limits the president to a maximum of two terms, but there has been much press speculation that Putin may seek to hold on to the reins of power after his presidential tenure has ended. The Kremlin Web site provides a biography of President Putin.

Sept. 2006—The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists published a report stating that 13 Russian journalists had been murdered since Putin came to power. Only three of those cases resulted in arrests and trials. "But, even then, prosecutions have fallen short of convictions,” reports the committee.

March 2007—Ivan Safronov died when he fell from a fifth-floor window in his apartment block. Safronov was a journalist on the independent Russian newspaper Kommersant. Allegedly, at the time of his death he was investigating Russian arms deals with Syria and Iran. According to British newspaper The Guardian, his colleagues scorned claims that Safronov committed suicide.

Politkovskaya established a reputation as an uncompromising journalist with her reporting from the front lines of the second Chechen war (1999–). In an interactive introduction from British newspaper The Guardian, the history of the Chechen separatist movement is traced to Russia’s conquering Chechnya in the 19th century. At the end of the World War II, Stalin “deported the entire Chechen population—men, women and children—to Siberia. Many died and none was allowed back for a decade.” In 1992, after the collapse of the USSR, Chechen President Dudayev demanded total independence from Russia.

Anna Politkovskaya’s diaries, covering the period from the Russian parliamentary elections in Dec. '03 to Aug. '05, were published posthumously in 2007. Publishers Weekly described "A Russian Diary" as recording “with dismal and sardonic exactitude the encroaching power of the State.” Excepts from the journal are available online.

The Chechen capital of Grozny was, as recently as early 2006, “less a city than rows of shattered buildings overlooking cesspools,” according to a Sept. 2007 New York Times report. Since then, Grozny has been the beneficiary of an impressive reconstruction program. The building initiative is part of a two-stage strategy to defeat the Chechen rebellion—“extraordinary violence, followed by extraordinary investment,” as the Times puts it. The downside of this plan has been, writes the Times, that “allegations of human rights abuses by both Russia and its local allies have been largely ignored.”